Paterson

During the Christmas holidays I went to see Paterson, the delightful film about a bus driver who writes poems. The poems in the film are by the New York poet Ron Padgett. Back home I found his work in the New York Poets II Anthology, including the Love Poem that Paterson writes in the film. The first line is: We have plenty of matches in our house.

Paterson is also the title of a long poem by William Carlos Williams, so I re-read him. Seeing Paterson sit in his bus scribbling away each morning before he drives off for the day reminded me of another American poet, William Stafford. He wrote a poem each day, starting with a brief description of the weather, then a short aphorism, then a poem. I believe his “hit rate” for acceptances was 1 : 7, or 1: 8. I’ll settle for that!

May you have a healthy, happy and creative year. If you’re short on inspiration, you can always write about the matches in your house. Over Christmas I used up a couple of boxes of good old “Svalan” from Sweden. Now I’ m on “Flix” from the Netherlands. The packaging is modern, but the tips are brown…